


When I have fears that I may cease to be

by Panickedpenguin



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Depression, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, John Keats - Freeform, M/M, New Year's Eve, Poetry, Steter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22194343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panickedpenguin/pseuds/Panickedpenguin
Summary: It's New Year's Eve when Stiles finds himself at Peter's door. He reads poetry and might learn something new.
Relationships: Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 12
Kudos: 82





	When I have fears that I may cease to be

It was the end of a long year in a long life and, Stiles supposed, it was nowhere near over yet. He sat at his desk outside of Lydia’s office, shifting paperwork under the fluorescents that shone just too bright and retrieved the final documents of the latest trial. Lydia was the best defense attorney for the supernatural in the country and Stiles was her powerhouse of a paralegal assistant. They ran their own private business and traveled to meet their client’s needs. 

That morning they had stood outside of a New York hostel, reeking of weed and lost souls, to drop off a young witch who had been declared Not Guilty. Left her there with her poisonous herbs and glaring rat familiars to be free another day. Back in Beacon Hills, life was sifting through the cracks of Stiles’ mind to shake beneath his feet. 

It was New Year’s Eve and Stiles was dangerously close to midnight. He shut down his computers and piled everything away for another day, another case, another rampage of research and heartbreak. 

The year has been long but his life has been longer. Battling alphas and spirits and the monsters that go bump in the night, learning to change them in his mind to victims, to people. Circumstance lead him and Lydia to this career field, and it is booming. Secrets float across his desk like the league of battlescars across his skin, the howling of wolves in his head and blood stained floors in his dreams. Lydia had taken the day off entirely, another year won, and Stiles didn’t know what to do with himself.

The pack was likely to be at the Hale house, reconstructed and painted a bright white, downing wolfsbane laced alcohol and pulling out all the crazy party tricks. Lydia might be there. Scott will already be drunk and flinging Kira around in some estimation of a dance. Stiles can feel the buzz of anticipation in his fingers as he twitches over the elevator buttons, heading towards his Jeep Highlander. He wants it all to stop; stop howling, stop buzzing, stop circulating over and over and over, to just stop the new year from coming. 

It’s funny how anticipation feels so much like dread.

Stiles drives. He thinks he’s going to go home, but home is dark and cluttered, an apartment downtown that overlooks main street. He likes his apartment, has loved it since Scott and Kira moved in next door and Lydia swept up the penthouse suite. It’s the home he can use to distract himself from the thoughts, the memories, the rushing of his blood in his brain that the Adderall never could quench. But now Stiles isn’t driving home, or to the Hale house, or anywhere really. Without a case, without a lead lined up or a mutinous attempt on the town, what is there? What does Stiles have to keep him in place?

This is how Stiles ends up at Peter’s door. He wouldn’t be at the New Years party, he wouldn’t be gulping down booze and yelling with the kids. He wouldn’t be spinning his pregnant wife like Scott or getting laid in the master bedroom like Lydia. He would be at home, like Stiles should be at home, breathing. 

Or, trying to breath. 

Not breathing at all. 

He doesn’t have to knock, that’s the perk of living among wolves. Doesn’t have to stop and think and wait. Doesn’t need to announce his arrival, just show up and have it be known and have it be received as it will. Like his presence is taken out of his own hands and put into that of the wolf, to accept him or move him aside. He doesn’t have to be responsible for his own actions.

“Stiles,” Peter says, and he steps aside to let the man in, like it’s nothing. 

Stiles walks in and drops his briefcase and drops his coat and toes off his shoes. He’s on the living room couch before he can exhale, Peter putting water on in the kitchen.

“Hope I’m not ruining your big plans for the evening. I didn’t want to be at the pack house.” Stiles tells Peter, poking at the stack of books on the coffee table. He recognizes two as being Latin, one as Portuguese, but can’t tell the languages of the other four. The book on the couch, though, open facedown to hold the page Peter must have been reading, is in English. A book of poems, the cover faded to a crisp yellow. 

“And you didn’t want to be alone?” Peter infers. It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer, not from pack, not on a holiday that should be worth celebrating. He pours boiling water into a couple mugs.

“You should get a dog,” Stiles diverts, picking up the book of poems and going over the words:

_“When I have fears that I may cease to be  
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,  
Before high-piled books, in charactery,  
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;  
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,  
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,  
And think that I may never live to trace  
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;  
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,  
That I shall never look upon thee more,  
Never have relish in the faery power  
Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore  
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think  
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.” _  
\--John Keats

“I haven’t the need of a dog when I have so much responsibility to the puppies Scott can barely maintain.” Peter brought over the mugs of tea, placing them on the coffee table. His own smelt green and earthy, Stiles’ clearly full of sugar and milk.

“This is beautiful,” Stiles says of the poem, holding the book out in indication. He didn’t mind the tea, he knew Peter wouldn’t have hot chocolate. Or whiskey.

“John Keats,” Peter recites. “Died of tuberculosis in 1821. Known as one of the greatest authors of romance into the nineteen-hundreds, though not well received in his own time. He is most recognized for his Ode to Autumn. I know a verse you’ll like;

_And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep  
Steady thy laden head across a brook;  
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,  
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.”_

And Stiles liked it indeed. 

“Oozings,” he huffed into a giggle. Stiles looked at the page again, rereading the first two lines, memorizing the feel of fearing to cease to be and the glean of a teeming brain. Peter sipped his tea beside him, wearing soft sweatpants and bare feet. Stiles looked up at the clock on the wall.

“The hours are oozing by, huh? Got in from New York this morning, closed the file on an innocent witch, had fettuccini for dinner and it’s still not even tomorrow yet.” 

Peter glances at the clock too, seeing that it is 11:37pm. Tomorrow would be a Thursday, and there really wasn’t any rush to get to that. He picked up another book from the table, one with red lettering and what appeared to be a jam stain on the cover. Stiles fingers the handle of his proffered mug and reads the poem in its entirety again. 

Stiles wonders if it’s about unrequited love. A love as vast as the starry sky that leaves you standing alone until the end of time. He thinks about love and language and how he wished he could be a poet and put pretty words down on paper, true and revealing, soft and harsh. He wonders, too, if his poetry would be about throats torn open and the demons ripping out from under his bed. 

Silly, to think that demons only live in your head. 

But, with the love poem wrapping around his mind, the rhythm of words seeping into his zigzagging thoughts, he thinks it might be silly to not love them still. What is a saint without a demon to fight, what is the day without the night? His entire career has been based around the belief that there is redemption for every creature and goodness behind every heart. Fear and power and envy control us, Stiles thinks, but the beasts are more capable of action.

_Till love and fame to nothingness do sink._

“You got you’re revenge for love, right?” Stiles asks into the silence of the room. He doesn’t look up from the page of the book, it’s torn edges. It’d been over eight years since Peter returned from the dead the first time. This was old news, yet old news that Stiles was only now dusting off.

Peter looked at Stiles for a long while. He took another sip of his tea, then, “If love can be equated to revenge, sure. But I don’t think what I did was an act of love, it was an act of hate. The loss of love can only fester for so long before it’s meaningless.”

“Initially, though, it could’ve been love?” He asks, thinking of the fire, thinking of the madness on Peter’s face when he tore through flesh back then. It had looked like an act of hate, but wasn’t it only because he had loved so much?

“Stiles,” Peter hummed, “Why are you trying to discern the motivations of a madman? You know as well as I what happened. There was love, yes, maybe too much, maybe not enough.” Stiles looked up at him then, catching the shadow across Peter’s face, the electricity in his eyes. And then it was gone, replaced with the passive expression of a serpent. 

“Who’s to judge what love is worth,” Stiles shrugs, wistful in the face of starry sky and the magic hand of chance. He can feel the rise of the pack calling out in the distance and knows that love is worth everything, everything, and that it can just as easily be traded in for a gumball at the machine. 

Peter kept his gaze on Stiles’ hands, reading the expressions found in Stiles’ fingers. Stiles circled the rim of his mug before setting it aside. He read over the poem again, then looked up at the clock once more. 12:02am.

_Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance._

And to think, he may never live to trace their shadows. What a thought, to not know something in its entirety. Like searching for clues and only finding the night sky staring back at you. So Stiles reached over to Peter, who’s eyes still lingered, and pressed his fingers into his jaw. He kissed him then, dry and soft and slow. 

“Happy New Years, Peter,” Stiles whispered into the air between them. When he leaned back, he felt the smile on his face. That didn’t hurt at all. And he was breathing just fine.

“Happy New Years,” Peter said. He wore the smallest of smiles, the curl of the corner of his mouth. Soft and easy and not like hate at all.

They turned back to their books. Back to their blood soaked eyelids. Their knees were warm where they touched and their hearts were cold where they didn’t, not yet. It had been a long year, an even longer life and, Stiles supposed, it was nowhere near over yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first ever story posted to AO3. Nervous? What's that?! Please kudo or comment or bookmark or love or critique or daydream away, cuz I appreciate you!


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